Pages: Finished
Comments: Amelia, Citllali, Sarai
Choose a section of what you have read in your book this week and analyze the writing techniques used by the author. Explain the affect the technique has on the writing. A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer is a memoir so it's challenging to see the different writing techniques. Especially since this is a book about a touchy subject, it's hard to not sound insensitive when describing the writing techniques but I'll try. This book is written in a descriptive way. He talks about his child abuse in the most exaggerated way possible. Despite the fact that this book is based on the abuse from ages 4 to 12. he has very descriptive dialogue, settings and characters. In the story, I can tell he's a somewhat smart kid. I know this because in the different ways his mom abused him (having his bare body on the stove, rubbing diapers on his face, force feeding chemicals) he always thought about different strategies to avoid the abuse. He never fully avoided it because in the second time he tried to, his mom knew what was going on.
This book doesn't have the tone that I expected it to have. I thought that it was going to have an upsetting tone. Another tone I expected it to have was perhaps a you-can-get-through-this-terrible-abuse if that even makes sense. No, it has a "hey look how much of a living hell I lived in... hey really look! Look at my life! Whoo." I'm not saying that the events that happen aren't terrible, because it's all terrifying, but he kept repeating things over and over again and it was really annoying. His writing style makes me think if this even happened.
My sister was reading this book and had told me about what I read in your blog. I'm not sure if this is exactly accurate, but I think she had told me how his mom made him eat his throw up. I started to read this book, but I never finished it because I needed to read other books. I would really desire the ending to be that he would not get abused anymore and for the tone to change. Amazing blog!
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think he was being repetitive? What is the age of the child in the book? Do you think this was done to show his perspective. I have read this book and it is very much true.
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